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Kirk Talks to Spock about his “Fez Addiction” (Photo credit: The Rocketeer)

Star Trek is a sweeping space opera that involves countless worlds and even more alien beings. The numbers are simply staggering, and in the case of individuals, incalculable. Despite this, Star Trek stories are frequently personal. They involve family, loved ones, old friendships tested, betrayals, deceit, and all the stuff that makes drama…well…dramatic.

Whether these personal moments are interactions between established crew members, or those introduced by the events of a particular episode, making a Star Trek story personal makes it actually mean something. This gives the tale a life and feeling, it escalates dangers from being cold and removed to matters of the heart. And for a tabletop environment, it gives the players something to care about beyond the numbers.

This episode of our Star Trek campaign was very personal. In the one I ran, I had a player who played a Caitian Security Officer. In a twist of irony, he came from a family of rogues and ne’er-do-wells. It was this character’s desire to rise above his family’s choices and become something greater, at least in the light of law, order, and civility. From the onset of this character’s genesis, I knew I wanted to target that relationship: it was a plot handed to me on a silver platter.

The Genesis Event offered a prime excuse for a vicious, personal plot: the Genesis Wave had wiped out the Caitian homeworld and the species was in a chaotic state of relocation. This made them prime targets for plunder and exploitation, both by species outside their own and, more tragically, by those selfish few within their own species.

And thus my plot was hatched: rogue/pirate family members would play on familial allegiances to gain access to something powerful that could safeguard their vulnerable peoples versus plundering pirates!

For our group, the episode worked fantastically, with emotional ties being tugged, allegiances questioned, and motivations complicated.

This episode will likely require some tailoring to fit any given group, but it would be well worth the effort!

Ahhh, the Guardian of Forever, easily one of the Original Series’ most iconic entities. It was introduced in the “The City on the Edge of Forever” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever), an episode heralded by many as the best of the Original Series’ run. That point is up for fair debate, but what is inarguable is the Guardian’s longevity. The entity (or device…or just simply, “thing”) encapsulates much of what Star Trek is about: unknown, exploration of deeper meanings, grand power (and more importantly, what it means to wield it), and place in the universe.

It should be no surprise, then, that the Guardian would make its appearance in my Star Trek game.

Like most Original Series episodes, however, this one would not hold up to traditional table top gaming; there simply isn’t enough material (as is) to entertain a group of nine players. But the Guardian, and its capabilities, intrigued me. The notion of being able to go back in time to witness, or directly impact, an historic moment in time is fascinating. To make things even more tantalizing, with a universe as diverse and detailed as Star Trek, the potential “historic moments” are numerous!

So, I wanted something that would be familiar, something that would grab and entice and compel to keep “correct”. But I also wanted to avoid some elements that had been overused (World War II, for example). Finally, after a great deal of thought and reading, I settled on a Star Trek historical event, one that was entirely fictitious, but utterly necessary to the proper evolution of the universe. I settled on First Contact (the movie; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_First_Contact).

Staging the episode during the night of the Borg attack on the Phoenix provided the episode with a setting and foe that was simultaneously undeniable and exhilarating. This provided the players an opportunity to interact with a reviled and feared enemy, contend with a scene many knew quite well, applied an external pressure not typical of the Star Trek episodic adventures previous detailed, and, ultimately, produced one of the most tragic moments in the game. When a young Trill science cadet was infected with assimilating nanites, the tension at the table was real. As the player ultimately settled on a strange dual-symbiosis between symbiont, nanite, and host the excitement and enthusiasm for the character’s evolution was felt by all.

It was, as all roleplaying sessions ought to be, ridiculously fun and ripe with long-lasting memories.

Well, this is exciting news! Exile Games Studio has just launched (and its already over 2/3rds of the way there) their latest Kickstarter project, the long awaited, much desired (just look at that picture!) Revelations of Mars.

Okay, so I am a bit biased on this one. These guys are enablers of my craft, encouragers of all things original, and long-time friends (they could even qualify as extended family). Jeff Combos and Sechin Tower gave me an opportunity and I will forever be grateful to them for it.

None of that has anything to directly do with the inevitable awesomeness that will be Revelations, but I feel it necessary to shout it from a mountaintop (Ron Burgundy-style) and cheer these guys on.

I could go in to great depth on this project, but Jeff’s already done that. Instead, I’ll limit it to this: Four-armed, green-skinned Martian princesses! Swashbuckling sky pirates! Beast-riding! Ubiquity system! WOO!

It is interesting, when talking about (and working on) Star Trek episodes (or adventures, as the case may be) and their foundations — that is to say, where they find their roots. Take The Original Series’ “Obsession” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsession_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series) which has clear links to “Moby Dick”. This is a tale of one man’s vengeance and quest for atonement. Just like other episodes before this one, the theme and story was compelling and exciting, but once thoroughly examined, did not lend itself well to group play.

That did not deter me from wanting to re-imagine the story, however.

In the end, this episode wound up having a little bit of everything, which (I think) is one of the reasons my players responded to it so well. There’s exploration — and not just space, the PCs get to explore a planet. In this, my group greatly expanded upon the written narrative and turned the planetside exploration into a session itself. This, in turn, enabled me to truly showcase some of the oddities created by the Genesis Event and what a newly “birthed” planet might actually be like, with rapidly evolving and competing ecosystems.

There’s spaceship combat. In this case, it was against a vessel type previously encountered (including an old foe, enabling the group to expand their rogues’ gallery) which showcased the sharp contrast between their earlier starship and their newer one.

There’s a bit of a mystery to it all, as well. Although, like most re-imaginings, astute players will see the “mystery” for what it is (although, that can be a powerful RP tool, as my players demonstrated repeatedly).

There’s ground-based combat, too. Yeah, the players got to fire their phasers (and the Security head got to use Photon mortar aspects, too)!

There’s even a good chunk of social interaction, between the colonists, the enemies, and in dealing with (and figuring out) the mystery.

So, really, the episode truly had a bit of something for everyone.

This is also one of those adventures that appears rather short on paper, but has a greater depth than what its length might otherwise indicate; there are ample opportunities to expand and improvise. And so, it is this wide combination of set pieces and situations that helped to create an incredibly entertaining whole.

The Original Series of Star Trek enjoyed visionary stories, ground-breaking characters, exciting locales, and great special effects. All of those qualities have stood the test of time, except for the special effects. As is evident by the remastered episodes, this is an understood effect due to the advent of CGI. Simply put, the dreams woven by Star Trek’s visionaries are far easier to realize with CGI than models and celluloid shading. No better example of this exists than the neural parasites of Deneva.

Encountered in “Operation – Annihilate!”, episode 29 of season 1 of Star Trek (The Original Series) (found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation:_Annihilate!), these terrifying creatures resembled little more than quivering, fried eggs. The concept of the episode was chilling and unnerving: the Enterprise crew encounters a planet overrun by alien parasites that induce insanity. To explorers, this is a nightmare manifested. For a child watching this episode in syndication in the late 70s, it was near-comical. There really is nothing frightening about a quivering, fried egg, even when…or especially when…thrown and “stuck” to your favorite half-human/half-Vulcan’s back.

It should be clear, then, that the episode begged for a re-imagined staging during the Star Trek campaign I ran. The story was sound and the unlimited SF/X budget afforded any tabletop RPG group fit the need perfectly. And so, “Operation – Annihilate!” served as the basis for the first episode of Season Two. Of course, this episode also introduced the crew’s new captain and their new ship, this alternate universe’s equivalent of the “Enterprise”.

Additionally, this proved an ideal time to “promote” all of the PCs and to make them full-fledged department heads. This move granted each player a greater degree of narrative influence, both in access to the captain, as well as freedom to design and introduce crew in their department. In essence, it served to heighten player ownership and involvement in the ever-growing universe and story that was our Star Trek game.

So, for your enjoyment, here is the next episode of our continuing voyages…

Wow. How cool! Recently (as in today), a fellow Trek-fan compiled the Star Trek rulebook PDFs, inserted the addendums, and slapped a snazzy cover on it all to provide one and all an unified PDF Star Trek FATE document. He even named it, “To Boldly Go”. Pretty appropriate, I think!

When I set out to put together, and run, a Star Trek campaign, I insisted on emulating the television series over the films. They lent themselves better to a long-term tabletop campaign, with the styles, themes, and development mirroring one another quite nicely. Therefore, each “adventure” needed to be a complete “episode”, one that mostly told its tale, but that continued to chew on material introduced earlier, while adding just a bit more. Eventually, as episodes occurred and moved into “lore” the universe deepened and grew more complex. There were names, ship, system, personnel, and otherwise, each carrying a bit of flavor and history which collectively created a vivid fabric for our games.

Likewise, I planned from the very beginning, to run in “seasons”. Each season was given its overall storytelling “task”. Season One’s task was straightforward enough: introduce the players to the setting and establish the stage for the following seasons. Like any good season, the season finale needed to be exciting. It needed to answer a few questions, but pose even more. It needed to kick that “want for more” in the behind and get the players begging for the next episode immediately. It needed to be BIG.

Therefore, for the first time in several episodes, we returned to original content, playing more on information provided all the way back in episode one. Here, at least to the audience, we finally reveal what happened in the first episode’s opening sequence. And I’ll tell you, my players ate it up.

This was a big episode, both in scope and in mechanics. It was the first “large scale combat” ran for the Star Trek game. A good chunk of that conflict was kept to narration, with “pocket events” doled to the players to, not only keep them engaged, but give them power to help shape the conflict. Granted, to set things up for what was to come, there wasn’t actually a tremendous amount of influence that could be had. In fact, the episode winds up playing a bit more like a natural disaster movie in that the main characters can’t really thwart the “doom”, but instead are scrambling to find a way to survive. While that is far more “railroading” than I am normally comfortable with, it was all done for very good reasons.

And that survival was vital, it enabled the setup that would come in following episodes to work that much better. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, let’s just enjoy the exciting catastrophe that is Day Zero.